Michael Kownacky

We’re taking a look at two versions of the Orpheus legend that were written about 100 years but stylistically lightyears apart on this week’s Sunday Opera (4/27 3:00 p.m.) with Franz Joseph Haydn’s “L’anima del filosofo ossia Orfeo ed Euridice” and Jacque Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld.”

We know that spring sprang last month, but it seems as though all of the flowers bloomed around here this week (at least, that’s what our eyes and sinuses have been telling us). Since that’s the case, we thought we’d honor spring springing with a program of “spring” songs on this week’s Dress Circle (4/27 7:00 p.m.).

We’re dusting off some English history on this week’s Sunday Opera (4/20 3:00 p.m.) through a work by Camille Saint-Saens, a live 1991 recording of his rarely performed “Henry VIII.” The libretto by Armand Silvestre and Leonce Detroyat looks at a small section of the infamous life of a man driven by ego, a thirst for power, and the overpowering need to have a male heir.

Sometimes, one just needs a place, a special place to find solace and comfort, and we’re going to look at fourteen of our favorite places to escape on this week’s Dress Circle (4/20 7:00 p.m.).

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov is the featured composer on this week’s Sunday Opera (4/13 3:00 p.m.) and his 1881 work based on a Russian folk legend. “The Snow Maiden” is an allegorical story dealing with the conflict of “eternal forces of nature” involving the interactions of humans, mythological characters, and those who are a combination of the two. It was said to have been Rimsky-Korsakov’s favorite opera.

Every once in a while, silly happens, and one must recognize it. With that in mind, this week’s Dress Circle (4/13 7:00 p.m.) is born of silly but filled with some wonderful songs as we look at songs about “hands” for Palm Sunday.

Many don’t realize that Franz Joseph Haydn wrote operas because they all seemed to disappear when he died. However, on this week’s Sunday Opera (4/4 3:00 p.m.), we’ll hear one of them, number 11 of 13, in a lovely recording from 2009. “La fedleta premiata” (“Fidelity Rewarded”) was first performed in Hungary in 1781 to celebrating the reopening of the Eszterhaza theatre after it was destroyed by fire. The cast was reduced and most of the low comedy removed, and its new version was performed in 1782. It was a miracle of its day having been written for a “state-of-the-art” theatre that had the latest innovations in stage machinery which it fully used.

We’re welcoming in April with our regular monthly feature on this week’s Dress Circle (4/4 7:00 p.m.) by looking at some of the shows that opened in New York this month, and we’re spanning 114 years of musical history in doing so!

Families are wonderful things, until they’re not, and many of the most dysfunctional families have made to the stage. We’re looking at the beginnings of one of them on this week’s Sunday Opera (3/30 3:00 p.m.) with Gaetano Donizetti’s “Rosmonda D’ Inghilterra.”

March is almost over, but we’re still in time for one of the monthly celebrations on this week’s Dress Circle (3/30 7:00 p.m.): celebrating Foreign Language Month! We’ve dug through out collection to come up with fourteen songs from English language musicals from foreign casts.